The Poetic Diary of Ramuntcho Matta (Excerpt I)
Ramuntcho Matta March 14, 2024
Here I stand. I am invited to do a tribute to my friend Lou Reed. He was a great influence on my desires for a higher life. He helped me understand what music is. That a record is a room full of doors. I met Lou Reed when I was 12 years old, and from that moment, he became a brother of soul. A presence. It's not easy to put into words, that thing beyond a thing.
The song that I sing here is the first collaboration I made with Brion Gysin. Brion wrote the lyrics and I called chords as they came to me.
I
I want somebody
somebody special
somebody special to live with
somebody special to look after me
I am looking for somebody
somebody special
and if that somebody special looks after me ?
I got the hands and the heart to give with
I am not all that hard
hard to live with
who can this somebody
somebody special
possibly be ?
maybe
this somebody
somebody special
can only be
me
me
me
I was 15 when I met Brion and a disaster. After three days in a new school, the principal called me into his office:
“I understand that your preference is to be on the street and you’re right, you can learn a lot of precious things out there, but my function here is to educate you. I will offer you a deal: if you come to poetry and philosophy lessons and you help a friend a mine, a dying old man, by cooking for him, helping him to clean himself and just being there, then I won’t tell your parents that you’re not going to school and every year I will put you on the next level”. That old man was Brion Gysin.
It is better to have a body than not, but worst of all is to not be prepared for the loss of it. We started by studying the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Egyptian Book of Breathing. It took Brion ten years to die so we had time to study this and other things. He had spent 23 years of his life in Morocco, initiating himself to the keys of invisibility, and to the keys of time.
I was 16 when we made that song. Brion had been writing songs since the 1940s but he never had the courage to sing them. So I wrote the music to try and put him on the track he had feared.
Music is, for me, one of the keys, but the key to what door?
The song starts with an "I" and ends with “me, me, me". Is there one I and three mes? Sometimes we need a substitute personality to handle confusions and another me can come in, and then another one, and a third and so on. But when we have too many, how can we get rid of them?
You have to ride on
And fly in
Every morning I do a little drawing and I put some lyrics on them, like a song. Drawing is music, it is vibrations and frequencies, colors and feelings. Words arrive and then something else entirely joins them.
I
I want something
something special
something special to live with
something special to look after me
What is ‘me’ is a good question. How is ‘me’ is a better one. How do I become a better me is better yet.
Ramuntcho Matta is a producer, sound designer and visual artist.
